After the London forward recorded his hat trick and sixth point in the Knights' 11-2 pasting of the Windsor Spitfires last night, a fan threw one of the big-brimmed Mexican hats onto the ice at the John Labatt Centre.

"Of course, I'm keeping it," said the 19-year-old Edmonton Oilers prospect who now has eight goals and 20 points in five games for the Knights this season. "It's my first one (Mexican hat). Trevor Kell got (a sombrero) last year. It's staying with me."

The Knights scored four goals in the first period and six in a merciless third en route to an OHL-best sixth straight win of the season while running their unbeaten streak against Windsor to 23 games.

Even with the game well out of reach, the Knights kept their top power-play unit in the game, allowing Schremp, Dylan Hunter and OHL leading scorer David Bolland to rack up extra points. The final shot tally was 62-24 in favour of the Knights, who outshot the Spits 27-4 in a one-sided third period.

"We're not trying to diss Windsor but we have some guys in the points race and that's important," Schremp said. "This could be the last year for some of these guys and we don't want to be sitting out for 10, 12 minutes of a period. Sometimes you have games like this."

Do the players feel pity when they're piling on a hapless opponent?

"You do and you don't," Schremp said. "They kept taking penalties and we've have our top power play out there when it's 2-1 so why shouldn't we have it out there when it's not close. We're not worried about cheap shots -- we have guys, Kelly Thomson, Josh Beaulieu, to take care of that."

London head coach Dale Hunter defended his decision to leave star players out even with the lopsided score.

"It's a reward system. These are the guys you need to be going for you and some nights it's not easy for them to get points," Hunter said. "We lost 8-1 at the start of the year in Owen Sound and they left their best guys out there in that one. They were trying to reward Bobby Ryan. That stuff doesn't bother me. When that happened, we shouldn't have taken penalties. If you want to stop it, don't take penalties."

Though Schremp and Bolland, with his 14th of the season, scored, the Knights also got goals from defencemen Ryan Martinelli and Andrew Wilkins, who both potted their first in the OHL.

Wilkins, a 17-year-old blue- liner who began the season with the Knights, was called up from the London Nationals of the Western Junior B Hockey League earlier in the day.

"I found out at school that I was going to be playing," said Wilkins, a Pickering native. "I don't know if I'm playing (in Toronto tomorrow) yet. It was a great feeling to get that first goal. It was unexpected."

Entering last night's tilt, London owned the best power play in the OHL while the Spitfires, who fell to 2-8 on the season, were saddled with the league's worst penalty kill.

But the Knights scored their first five goals in even-strength play. The potent power-play unit didn't get rolling until the third period when the Knights buried four of their six goals with the man advantage.

London forward Kelly Thomson was a healthy scratch for the sixth consecutive contest.

GM Mark Hunter chatted with the Knights tough guy about his situation before the game and also had a lengthy discussion with Windsor GM and coach Moe Mantha.

"We're looking around to see what's out there," Mark Hunter said. "There's quite a few teams that have (less than three over-age players). We don't want Kelly sitting (for 30 straight games). Something will be done soon."